From leo@ripe.net Sat Oct 18 21:41:55 2003

Dear Leo,

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"An AW can be applied to an End User network once per 12-month period. This means an LIR can make more than one assignment to an End User _in_any_such_12_months'_period, but the total amount of address space I think this should be added to improve clarity but...

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cannot be larger than the LIR's AW. An LIR's AW is considered unused on the anniversary of the first (?!? I would think _last_) assignment to the End User._After_the_exhaustion_of_the_AW, the LIR may only assign additional addresses to the same End User after approval from the RIPE NCC.

(In one of the sentences above I have the impression that first should be changed to last - did I misunderstood something?) ... I think the ambiguity in the wording here reflects the ambiguity in the policy. We could update the wording to use the word "last" but that would make the policy more strict than it is at the moment. At some point it would be useful to review and rationalise the current AW policy. It is fairly complicated to document and so fairly documented to use. It would be good (after publishing this updated document, I hope) to take a new look at this part of the policy.

I quote below the relevant part of RIPE-234:

" 5.2.5.2 Assignment Window for End User Assignments

An LIR can apply their Assignment Window to an End User network only once in any 12-month period. This means that if an LIR makes more than one assignment to an organisation, the total amount of address space assigned with their AW in any twelve month period may not exceed the LIR's AW size. The LIR may only assign additional addresses to the same organisation after approval from the RIPE NCC. "

In my view, this means that I may for example assign an AW worth of address space to the End User on 1 January of every year (assuming that I make no further assignments during the year).

I also understand that the AW is unused at a moment in time, if at that moment I am allowed to assign an AW worth of address space (to that particular End User).

In the above example, let's assume that I started assigning address space to the End User on 1 January 2000. The last time I have therefore assigned to them was 1 January 2003. If I read the text of the Draft, this means that my AW (with respect to that End User) is UNUSED, as it has to be considered unused starting 1 January 2001 (the anniversary of the FIRST assignement). My undertsanding is that it should read "LAST", therefore the AW would have to be considered unused starting 1 January 2004.

Did I misunderstand something?

I think we may have been saying the same thing in different ways.

Correct. This is what happened.

The AW is refreshed on the anniversary of the first assignment. However, the way we look at it is that assignments following the first assignment are subtracted from the 'refreshing' and they have their own anniversaries.

For example, if I had a /21 AW and made a /23 assignment to a customer on 1 January 2003 I would have a /22 and a /23 left from my AW for that customer for the rest of the year. If I assigned the same customer another /23 on 1 April, 1 July and 1 October my AW (for that organisation) would return to /23 on 1 January 2004. It would not return to /21 because there were three subsequent assignments each of which has an anniversary.

If there's agreement that this is correct then we can update the text for the policy document to something clearer.

I agree with what you detailed in your reply. Yes, please do make the document more clear, as I for one misunderstood it. Thanks and regards, Janos